Selling health products online requires you to get in front of the right prospects. That’s true for selling anything. Of course there’s more to it than that, especially for selling natural health products, which people buy very differently than they buy other products.
At Creative Thirst we have an entire framework built around selling health products and dietary supplements online for companies that are ready to grow. But your health supplement business can’t possibly make a single sale if you don’t have enough opportunities to sell in the first place.
The quickest way to sell online is by driving relevant traffic to a strong offer, specifically a direct response offer for an immediate sale.
Because traffic is so important, you want 100% control over it. The amount, the ability to increase the quality of it and everything that goes long with that.
The reality is the fastest route to your target market is through tapping into an existing platform, like Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. Which means you’ll always be at the mercy of that platform owner.
Here’s what inevitably happens in this situation.
Several months ago, Facebook deleted over 80 accounts focused on health, natural remedies, and organic living in an apparent crackdown.
Natural Medicine (1 million followers… GONE)
Natural Cures Not Medicine (Lost 2.3 million followers)
People’s Awakening (Had 3.6 million followers, but not any more)
Conscious Life News (1.1 million followers, were instantly wiped out)
In addition to several smaller accounts with under 15,000 followers that were also permanently removed.
That means no more traffic for those health brands from Facebook… FOREVER.
It’s happened before this and it will continue to happen again and again. Health products and dietary supplements are particularly susceptible to this type of banning. Especially right now in this current time in history where “fake news” is a thing.
This is a direct result of Facebook’s Fact-Checking Program expansion. Which involves a combination of automated technology checking and human review, that makes the final call.
The human review is completed by a combination of in-house and independent third-party fact-checkers, certified through the International Fact-Checking Network, according to TechCrunch.
It’s not just Facebook that’s been cutting down alternative health marketers off at the knees.
Google has also updated it’s organic search algorithm with similar effects that suppress big alternative health sites.
Popular sites like Dr.Axe.com have taken major hits in traffic. Losing approximately 8 million organic visits a month, overnight.
This is a serious threat to alternative health businesses. Some dietary supplement businesses are losing their entire livelihoods. Their passion and purpose in life is being crushed by advertising platforms everywhere.
Is this a form of censorship?
Should an advertising platform have the right to remove you completely and without question? Without even a warning? Should they give you a chance to comply with however they feel you should be marketing your business before expelling you forever?
As long as they own the platform and have access to the market you’re completely at their mercy.
But there are ways to work around these platforms, and within them.
Alternative platforms like Trooth, a social network for alternative thinkers, (which is by invitation only and part of the Global Freedom Movement) have started as a result. But they are dwarfs,topping out at 48,000 visitors a month, in comparison to the giant juggernaut Facebook (at 22.6 Billion visitors a month). Without the reach of millions of potential buyers your ability to get in front of the right prospects is severely limited.
The other alternative is to drastically pull back on the emotional marketing approach, which every direct response health brand uses because it works to sell. This requires removing all “hooks” , headlines, and more that grab attention. Instead leading with simple offer driven messaging.
I’ve been seeing more and more of this trend toward offer driven vs. hook driven marketing on Facebook in particular.
BioTrust for example often runs a straight discount offer for a single bottle of supplements for 50% OFF or a Buy One Get One Free (BOGO) offer on the front-end with an up-sell funnel after the purchase.
There’s no hype on the front end at all and the customer goes in knowing the full offer. The problem with this is it will only work with the subset of the market that already knows your product and wants it.
One of the things that makes direct marketing so powerful is that it can warm up a cold market to buy. With an offer driven approach you have a lot fewer tools at your disposal and are forced to only pull the lower price lever. This trains the customer to wait and only buy when you offer deals, thus cutting into your already lower margins.
Plus this will cause health marketers to essentially flood the market with 50% Off and BOGO offers, before upping the game to 70% Off, Buy 2 Get 1, and increasingly better deals. Leading to even lower margins and turning their dietary supplements into commodities.
If Facebook is going to cut off the direct marketer at the knees, then it’s only worth it to advertise there for abandon cart visitors and remarking. The days of warming up the market on Facebook and building a community may be over.
Sure, an e-mail list is one way but there is even a better alternative available?
Is There Any Other Alternative For Selling Health Products Online?
In this day and age of which hunts, due to massive fake news campaigns and the fear and doubt that’s flooding the culture, owning the platform that reaches your audience has never been more important.
Lee Bellinger, founder of Independent Living, a private subscription news advisory, listed this as a big reason why he uses a print newsletter.
News of health breakthroughs, regulatory and governmental threats and other critical news information is a central focus of Independent Living News.
And most importantly, Independent Living has total control over the content and direct access to his audience.
Sure it takes more time and money to build up that audience than a simple Facebook campaign, but you won’t wake up one day and find your asset gone because it violated some vague terms of service, or someone decided they just didn’t like it.
Perhaps, we’ll see a resurgence back to direct mail offers and maga-logs in the future. I don’t think it’s out of the question, when everything old becomes new again.
Three Funnels Every Health Supplement Business Needs To Build A Multi-Million Dollar Empire
Through our work in the online health space, we’ve optimized many dietary supplement businesses. In that time, we’ve uncovered the three critical funnels for success.
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